U.S. Special Forces train Afghans in own image, success could lead to troop withdrawals in region

CAMP MOREHEAD, Afghanistan - When two U.S. sailors went missing during an SUV excursion from Kabul last month, elite troops here were given a key role in the search.

The special troops weren't American. They were Pashtun tribesmen from Afghanistan's new commando force.

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"For four days, every six hours, there were aircraft here taking Special Operations Forces - both ours and Afghan - away from here," said a U.S. Green Beret major who commands this base south of Kabul.

It was a dramatic sign of the trust senior U.S. officers now place in the Afghan Commandos and the super-elite Afghan Special Forces.

Those units are a new but essential ingredient in the joint counterinsurgency strategy pushed by NATO's Afghanistan commander, Gen. David Petraeus, to bring the Taliban to heel.

Unlike the 100,000 U.S. troops built up by President Obama's troop surge, joint American and Afghan special operations teams will fight together for years beyond the July 2011 target date to start withdrawing, commanders told the Daily News.

The 4,000 U.S. special ops troops deployed in rural Afghanistan aren't enough to embed in every village, so they are cranking out Afghans in their own image.

So far, 5,300 commandos in nine "kandaks" - battalions - have graduated. Soon, 72 Afghan Special Forces teams will deploy around the country to secure the rural tribal population.

They will partner with Green Beret teams in "village stability operations" - nicknamed "precision counterinsurgency" by commanders - to carry out Petraeus' order last month for G.I.s to "live with the people."

It's an old concept that gave Green Berets some local successes in Vietnam. But there are doubts whether the idea of weaving U.S. and Afghan Special Forces into the fabric of Afghan villages is nine years too late.

Villagers are leery because of past broken promises of security, followed by the return of a vengeful Taliban, said the U.S. commander of the program, Army Col. Donald Bolduc.

What's new, he said, is that "we're living in the villages, not on firebases." Along with their security role, the units will carry out village improvement projects.

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"We're not establishing warlords and we're not establishing militias," he added.

Commanders expect the program to last several years. It will succeed "if they let us do it right," said a Green Beret team sergeant who has done five tours here.

If it works, it could help the U.S. extricate itself from the nine-year-old war.

"The U.S. troops have to go back to their homes," Afghan Army Col. Muhammad Nader said. "It's our responsibility to defend our country."

Over the course of the war, the Afghan Army has often been unreliable - plagued by corruption, deserters and turncoats. U.S. commanders see creation of tough, professional, elite Afghan forces as a breakthrough, and demonstrated their faith during the hunt for the two sailors.

The sailors disappeared in Logar. One was killed after their SUV was ambushed. The Taliban claimed they had captured the second one.

So commanders sent U.S. Special Operations-trained Pashtun officers and soldiers from the Commando brigade to the Pashtun-dominated province as a show of force by professionals and to press tribal leaders to help.

"People know that if the Commandos come in, they're not going to tear up the place," said the Green Beret major here, who cannot be named because his missions are classified. "But they are feared by the enemy."

Eventually, the second sailor was found dead under circumstances still shrouded in mystery. But the Commandos' efforts made their mark.